1
Introduction
Kuei Tien Chou and Dowan Ku
Climate change is a cross-border risk that is global in nature. It exhibits the characteristics of being cross-scale, cross-spatial, and cross-border (Bulkeley 2005), and therefore compels people to develop new research methods to manage these highly complex and transdisciplinary issues. Many studies have pointed to how climate change has opened up new analytical orientations which have created new challenges to existing research. For example, Hannigan (1995), Reusswig (2010), and Heinrichs and Gross (2010) highlighted the challenges that acid rain and climate change bring to environmental sociology. In particular, Jasanoff (2010) pointed out that while global and large-scale representations of scientific knowledge articulated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) belong to the confines of the scale of knowledge, this should instead be changed to one of the scale of meaning. Such a viewpoint goes straight to the heart of the matter, that is, large-scale scientific knowledge should be translated into forms that would enable us to understand the impact on humans, life, production, consumption, and even on health, and how social science should also enter such research, in order to look at how it can be used to interpret, analyze, and construct astute governance, systems, and actions.
This book will discuss climate change governance in countries where a Western linear path to modernization has been adopted, and which have thus developed into high-carbon economies with a special focus on Asia, whether it be later-comer East Asian countries such as Japan, Taiwan, or South Korea, or developing countries like China, Southeast Asian, or South Asian countries. According to the Global Carbon Project (2018), China’s population has grown to over 1.4 billion people and its carbon emissions are in excess of 9.8 billion metric tons, making it the world’s largest carbon emitting country; Japan ranks fifth in carbon emissions, emitting more than 1.2 billion metric tons of emissions with a population of 127 million, and even though South Korea has a population of only about 51 million people, its carbon emissions rank seventh at 610 million metric tons, while Taiwan’s population of 23 million with carbon emissions of 270 million metric tons (and per capita emissions of 10.8 metric tons) ranks eighth in carbon emissions among countries with a population of more than 10 million people. Not to be outdone by these East Asian countries, rapidly developing countries too have increasing carbon emissions. India, which has a population of 1.33 billion and carbon emissions of 2.46 billon metric tons, ranks third in emissions. Thailand with a population of 69 million and carbon emissions of 330 million metric tons ranks twentieth in emissions, while the Philippines ranks thirty-seventh with 1.27 billion metric tons of carbon emissions. Basically, the post-war development in Asia has relied on a high-carbon society and a high-carbon economy model, on the back of a developmentalism model grounded in a high-carbon regime.
There is therefore an urgent need to change the frame of discussion around climate change research from one held within the confines of traditional national boundaries to that of a cross-border framework, whether it be about international norms, systems, or actions or the alignment of national policies to international standards. As such, since the 2000s, research on cosmopolitanism has gradually received attention, with many academics arguing for the need for a new framework to understand transboundary risk issues. Western scholars, such as Beck (1996, 2002, 2008, 2009), Grande (2006), Delanty (2006), Hulme (2010), Zurn (2016), and Beck and Levy (2013), have also emphasized the need for such development, and Asian scholars, such as Chang (2010), Han and Shim (2010), Zhang (2015), Chou and Liou (2012), and Chou (2018), have also pointed to the importance of adopting a new methodology to understand these issues. Fundamentally, there is a need in the social sciences to move toward the adoption of methodological cosmopolitanism as a replacement for methodological nationalism (Beck and Sznaider 2006; Beck and Grande 2010), which is to say that, even as scholars are focused on transboundary and cross-national events, the research cannot be confined to the traditional social science concept of studying them from a domestic perspective, but should instead be grounded in universalism and the synchronicity of global events, with an eye on the specific political and economic contexts of each country, in order to understand their commonalities and differences.
Although the changes in research methods have resulted in paradigm shifts, there have also been various research developments, the first of which is international comparative research, but such research has been focused on risk shocks, the decision-making of governments, and the social resistance faced by individual countries. The second approach focused at the level of the country, but where the discussion is taken from a global framework, of global norms, systems, and governance, to the corresponding development of the country. The third approach analyzes systems, governance, and norms from a trans- and cross-national perspective, to understand how these impact on countries, and the adjustments countries subsequently make. The fourth approach uses the trans- and cross-national perspective to understand the non-governmental organization (NGO) network and actions, and to study them in terms of their identities, collectivities, and communities. These various approaches involve the exploration of normative research and action research in cosmopolitanism studies. Beck (2014) stressed that the analytical units of study in methodological cosmopolitanism should be embedded in the national systems and processes, and should replace these national systems and processes with the cosmopolitanism governance approach, which would be in line with the first and second approaches mentioned above.
We start the discussion in this book by seeking to understand how people and governments in Asia address climate change, for instance whether it is being treated as a global, national, or local agenda, or whether it is seen as a scientific agenda, or an issue that touches on everyday life. We also look at the types of governances that have been constructed in Asia in order to tackle climate change. However, it is hard to find successful climate change governance in Asia because many Asian countries are trapped in the high-carbon economy model. Green politics on the basis of strong liberal democracy has not developed in Asia. Instead, the developmentalism model based on nationalism is a common characteristic in Asian countries. Nonetheless, environmentalists and local populations in Asia concerned about climate change have made a great effort to overcome climate change, and they have been working at the local, national, and global scales. It is also important to understand that the issue of climate change is constructed by various social forces. Social groups work together or fight each other over how climate change should be addressed. Climate change issues also cut across the traditional regime of governance.
However, new sustainability transition governance in which strong ecological modernization is successful can be constructed, if strong social solidarity movements for sustainability are sufficiently powerful. As it is, the cosmopolitan mindset has gained traction among peoples in Asia, though cosmopolitan governments have not yet taken root. In this book, we will therefore analyze how climate change governance in Asia is constructed and how it works on the national and local scales. Ultimately, climate change governance in Asia can be successfully constructed and implemented if governments are willing to work together not only with the business sector but also with civil society. In fact, there are already people in different parts of Asia who have mobilized themselves toward trying to achieve a sustainable society, thus the question is how we can take it to the next level.
Following this introduction, Chapters 2–5 discuss the Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) (under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) which exhibit characteristics of cosmopolitan governance, as well as the carbon emissions policies, regulations, and timelines of each country, in addition to the transformational challenges faced by these high-carbon societies with regard to their country systems, decision-making processes, social pressures, and social conflict discourses, among other things. Superficially, these countries have responded to the Climate Change Convention by pledging to commit to the INDCs or establishing carbon pricing (such as a regional carbon trading platform). However, in reality, they are trapped in their domestic high-carbon economic structure thus resulting in transitional difficulties. The domestic path dependence has locked these countries into the brown economy, which has dominated the development of their industries and energy use. While this research orientation is aligned to the perspective of institutionalized cosmopolitanism, in order to carry out system intervention and norm setting within a country as part of the Climate Change Convention, it requires further discussion on the transitional challenges, especially on the attitude of the country toward its economic development pathway, such as on the discursive struggle between the low-carbon economy and the brown economy between the government, industry, and society, whilst facing constraints imposed by the political and economic power of industry players and the capability of civil society.
As compared to Part I of the book which is focused on the policy and structural analysis, Part II deals with climate knowledge on a micro level: the risks, environmental frames, and sustainability. Climate knowledge and the governance structure should not be seen only as an issue to be dealt with at the international level, and while it is the basis for government decision-making and regulations, at the same time it is also relevant at the level of local knowledge, and neither level should be neglected. Chapter 6 on the example of Thailand shows that in the actual management of climate policy, if the discussion and understanding of local knowledge were to be neglected, this would lead to a decision-making gap, in that the national interpretation of climate information at the global level is relative to the interpretation by local communities of climate information at the local level, which could result in differences in governance. Chapter 7 compares the risk perceptions and attitudes of Japanese and European citizens toward energy and climate policies and highlights the differences in their perceptions. We can therefore observe the attitudes of people in these countries toward climate and energy policies, and the differences in public opinion in relation to cosmopolitan governance. Chapter 8 adopts the systemic risk perspective to study the opportunities for transition and the structural challenges faced in Taiwan regarding its climate policy. The author analyzes the existing system of climate decision-making and real-time climate and energy landscape from the perspective of the transitional management of society and technology, and discusses the possibility of policy innovation. Chapter 9 adopts the perspective of ecological modernization to look at the issue of carbon capture and storage; it explores the struggles of environmental movements and the social impact of carbon capture and storage (CCS) framing.
The third part of this book is focused on the urban sustainability, climate change adaptation, disaster management, and social network orientation of four countries: participatory knowledge lies at the heart of all the cases depicted. Chapter 10 discusses three case studies in Seoul in South Korea, to explore how grassroots participation and institutional innovation were able to successfully develop a pathway for sustainability transition. Chapter 11 discusses coffee cultivation in India, and how the participation of local farmers and their knowledge was used to develop the adaptation strategies to mitigate climate change. It therefore captures the viewpoints of the traditional knowledge of local communities toward climate issues, which in turn lead to various planting strategies. Chapter 12 analyzes the framework for climate disaster management in the Philippines and includes various case studies to highlight how local government units train local communities how to respond to and form a strategy to deal with climate disasters, and in the process construct relevant actions, highlighting the way in which the local governance of disaster reductions can be imbued with local knowledge. Chapter 13 discusses the climate strategies and the citizen participation network in Tainan, Taiwan. The authors adopted the social network perspective to analyze community participation, stakeholder perception, and local knowledge actions developed by the local flood control groups, so as to showcase the climate governance as developed by the urban social ecosystem. From these examples, it is possible to observe how different societies and their various contexts are able to produce the multitudes of actors and social networks that bring about very rich and diverse forms of governance.
Although the chapters do not directly address trans- and cross-national research, the authors in Chapters 2, 3, 4, and 5 review the carbon reduction timeline and targets of each country under the global norms of the INDC, and discuss the corresponding challenges faced under the framework of a high-carbon economy. Chapter 6 (in Part II) and Chapters 11 and 13 (in Part III) discuss climate change knowledge and its interconnection with national climate management and local knowledge, the climate knowledge of local coffee cultivation, and local flood control knowledge and networks, and how these interactions exemplify the diversity of social construction in cosmopolitan climate governance. Other chapters also include indirect discussion of cosmopolitanism in climate change issue...
